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What can be done to stop the declining numbers of women in law enforcement? If information is power, then Women Police: Portraits of Success could well reverse that trend. Author Patricia Lunneborg traveled from Anchorage to Brooklyn and points in between to conduct in-depth interviews with over 50 women officers, from small-town sergeant to the head of the Alaska State Patrol.

What drew them to the job in the first place?What keeps them on the job?What are their daily challenges and satisfactions?How do they balance work and family?What are their ideas for improving all aspects of the system--recruiting, training, retention, and promotion?

Portraits is a powerful recruitment tool, an essential primer for women thinking about a job in law enforcement. The book also serves the general public seeking answers to what the job is really like, career counselors, police recruiters, and law enforcement agencies at city, state, and federal levels trying to attract more women to protect and serve.

Written in a direct, personal style, this unique book belongs on library shelves in Career Counseling, Women's Studies, Society and Justice, Sociology. Where else can a woman learn if the police service is for her and the general public find out what the job is really about?

While traditional policing celebrated male officers as masculine crime fighters who were tough, aloof, and physically intimidating, policewomen were characterized as too soft and emotional for patrol assignments and were relegated to roles focusing on children, other women, or clerical tasks. With the advent of community policing, women's perceived skills are finally finding a legitimate place in police work, and law enforcement structures now encourage such previously undervalued feminine traits as trust, cooperation, compassion, interpersonal communication, and conflict resolution.

In this illuminating study of gender and community policing, Susan L. Miller draws on a combination of survey data, forthright interviews with a diverse mix of police officers, and extensive fieldwork conducted in a midwestern city where community policing has been practiced for over a decade. She describes the differences and similarities in policing styles of male and female officers, considers the relationships that develop between neighborhood police on foot and patrol officers in squad cars, and explores the interactions between neighborhood officers and community members.

Miller confronts such questions as how police reconcile incompatible images of masculinity and femininity; how actions of neighborhood police officers compare with those of traditional rapid response patrol officers; how community police cope with resistance from the rank and file; and how gender and gender-role expectations shape police activities and the evaluation of new skills.

Gender and Community Policing provides both a feminist framework for community policing and a fresh examination of how race, gender, and sexual orientation affect police image, identity, and methods.

Women's Police Stations examines the changing and complex relationship between women and the state, and the construction of gendered citizenship. These are police stations run exclusively by police women for women with the authority to investigate crimes against women, such as domestic violence, assault, and rape. São Paulo was the home of the first such police station, and there are now more than 300 women's police stations throughout Brazil. Cecilia MacDowell Santos examines the importance of this phenomenon in book form for the first time, looking at the dynamics of the relationship between women and the state as a consequence of a political regime as well as other factors, and exploring the notion of gendered citizenship.

In her thirteen years as special agent for the FBI, Rosemary Dew worked undercover against criminals, spies, and terrorists, earning eight commendations for her service. Despite her achievements, for her entire tenure she remained the subject of severe discrimination and even sexual harassment that the bureau seemed to condone rather than condemn. In elegant and deeply felt prose, Dew argues that this climate of corruption and duplicity not only taints the experience of the FBI's few female agents but also leads directly to some of the bureau's most harmful failures, such as the remarkable intelligence breakdown that allowed spy Robert Hanssen to operate undetected for more than two decades. Narrated by one of the most successful- and one of the only-women in the bureau's history, No Backup is a startling look at the destructive and discriminatory culture that dominates one of America's most powerful agencies, as well as an impassioned plea to an organization that must reform itself.

Drawing from empirical research and years of practical experience, this new text provides guidance on how to investigate sexual harassment in policing & firefighting. Written for practitioners by professionals in the field of law enforcement & victim advocacy, this text takes a conversational tone through the investigative processes of sexual harassment complaints. With sexual harassment law often changing, this text gives a current look at timely topics. The text addresses a wide range of issues including proactive measures like prevention and training, retaining a positive tone on issues of sensitive nature.

Janet Napolitano, Attorney General, State of Arizona...Marion Gold provides an indispensable resource for both scholars and members of the law enforcement community...about women in law enforcement, particularly those of us in leadership positions.

Governor George Pataki, New YorkThe remarkable strides that women have made in law enforcement are good not only for law enforcement but for America as well. Their stories serve as an inspiration to young women across America who have every right to believe they can pursue any career and rise to any challenge....

Dorothy Moses Schulz, Police Historian and Associate Professor, John Jay College, New York. Author of From Social Worker to Crimefighter: Women in United States Municipal Policing"Penny Harrington is one of only a handful of people who can claim to have changed American policing forever...Penny's fight against prejudice and discrimination is must reading....Eleanor Smeal, President, Feminist Majority Foundation"Penny Harrington not only smashed the glass ceiling but ...after a successful career...took on the daunting task of...improving police response to domestic violence and reducing police brutality. Penny illustrates how one woman's spirit can triumph over the toughest of 'ole' boys clubs."

Armed and Dangerous: Memoirs of a Chicago Policewoman

From Publishers WeeklyGallo's streetwise memoir--her first book--of policing Chicago's roughest neighborhoods blends equal parts humor and regret. A Chicago cop's daughter, Gallo completed a master's and began a career in psychology, but Reagan-era cutbacks directed her onto her father's path. Intending to work as a police therapist, she was instead unceremoniously assigned to the patrol division and became both a decorated officer and something of a trailblazer as one of the first women to receive high-risk tactical assignments. Gallo astutely considers the female cop's unique circumstances: male partners deride her femininity yet capitalize on it during domestic calls; romances with civilians seem doomed. The elusive "feminine" qualities, feared by old-boy police officials, benefited her performance, while the misery of the streets apparently took a greater psychic toll than on her male counterparts. Gallo's fresh perspective counters typical TV images of cops, as she describes the experiences of "[t]hose who muddle along... trying to do the right thing." She gives devastatingly effective accounts of relations between "brother" officers and of trying to avoid being perceived as a "bimbo with a badge" or a "dog cop" (lazy or irredeemably greedy). Weaker moments occur in the melodramatic re-created crime-scene dialogues. Gallo is at her best when straightforwardly detailing the earthy minutiae of "cop life" or casting about for the emotional costs of being both witness and enforcer amidst the violence of the inner city. (Mar.)Forecast: Given the preponderance of TV shows and movies about the police and the scarcity of unadorned every-cop accounts, Gallo's book could appeal to a broad readership if prominently displayed in stores (the guns on its cover will be a draw). Author appearances at Chicago-area bookstores and police-related community events will garner regional interest.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Amazon.comReaders may well find themselves looking nervously over their shoulders after finishing this memoir by Candice DeLong, who met a lot of Hannibal Lecter's soul mates during her 20 years as an FBI agent. An early practitioner of profiling, the analysis of crime data for what it reveals about the perpetrator, DeLong handled such ugly cases that she and her partner at one point were known as "the Gruesome Twosome." Her arrests included child molesters, rapists, and serial killers; among the book's useful features are her tips on what to do if you or your child is attacked. (Yell "Fire!" rather than "Help!" she advises; it attracts more attention.) Not that human nature's darker side was a surprise to DeLong, who came to the FBI from a job as head nurse in a maximum security psychiatric ward, where a violent paranoid schizophrenic crooned at her, "You better pray I never get out of these [restraints]. I could cut your head off. Or do you want me to tear your heart out?" The frank, conversational text ably captures the forceful personality of a female pioneer. The bureau had only been accepting women for eight years when DeLong joined in 1980, and her training at Quantico included brutal harassment by instructors determined to "wash out" any female applicant. Yet she had the toughness to survive and the good sense to know when to ignore her male colleagues' barbed jokes and when to kid them right back. Ultimately, she made friends and got ahead. As well as chronicling a stream of fascinating (and often deeply disturbing) high-profile cases such as the Unabomber, DeLong's narrative portrays a changing FBI, now valuing the special perspective contributed by female and African American agents it once scorned. --Wendy Smith

An overview of the history of women in policing accompanies the results from interviews with 40 male and 40 female police officers on their reasons for entering policing, their perceptions on the training they received, and their opinions on the pros and cons of police work. Officers' first-person stories shed light on the impact of their career choice on their social lives, and on their responses to typical situations on the beat. Parsons teaches criminal justice at California State University-San Bernardino, and was a full-time police officer before entering academia. Jesilow teaches in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Society at the University of California-Irvine.

How far have women progressed in the "unfeminine" career of policing? How far do they want to go? How far will their male colleagues and the public let them? Women in Control? breaks new ground by discussing the role of women in relation to controlling crime and disorder. Women have struggledto gain influence in policing, progressing only slowly until the 1970s, when equal opportunities legislation brought integration and some measure of success. Based on a series of interviews with British and U.S. officers, this work examines their experiences in dealing with crime, vice, and everydayincidents--including hostility and harassment by their male colleagues. It highlights the role of women in law enforcement in Great Britain and the United States and the importance of gender in social control.

It is often said that a woman must do a job twice as well as a man in order to get half the credit. This is particularly true of women in law enforcement. Women have been involved in various forms of policing for the last 100 years, but it wasn't until the Equal Employment Act of 1970 that women could move from the job of meter maids to patrol and detective work. Yet less than 1% of all top-level cops are women, and there remain significant obstacles in the career paths of women in the force. This book looks at the history of women police officers and provides first-hand accounts of women at every level, including those who drop out. It addresses discrimination, competition, lack of mentoring, differential treatment and sexual harrassment, examining what issues play into the decision to stick it out or leave that many policewomen face. It also considers the family issues these women return home to at the end of the day.

This book is about women at work, specifically in the very demanding and often dangerous occupation of law enforcement. While there are many justifiable, significant hurdles to be negotiated by people of both genders seeking employment in this occupation, this book takes the reader through the challenges as they more specifically confront females. During the past 30 years, the proportion of women serving as sworn law enforcement personnel has been growing, as several formal and often subjective barriers to hiring women have been modified or eliminated. Job discrimination lawsuits further expanded their opportunities; however, women remain overwhelmingly employed in the lowest tier of sworn police positions and in the proportion of women holding top command positions (captain and higher). Obviously, women still have a long distance to travel in order to reach parity with men in this occupation. First and foremost, police executives must see the value of utilizing women and vigorously recruit, hire, and retain them. Furthermore, as the community-oriented policing and problem solving (COPPS) strategy continues to expand across the nation and the world, we believe that female officers can play an increasingly vital role in it. Indeed, many experts in the field believe the verbal skills that many women possess can help to usher in a "kinder, gentler organization." The authors feel that this book serves as a unique and valuable resource for Momen who are interested in entering the often daunting and veiled world of policing.

Constituting fewer than 15% of the nation's police officers, women have found it especially difficult to rise through the ranks and achieve higher posts. Here, those few women who have made it to the top--about 1% of the chiefs and sheriffs in American policing--share their stories and describe the challenges they faced as they rose to their positions. Each of the chiefs competed for their offices with other candidates, almost always male. The sheriffs--virtually all elected officials--faced other challenges and came under even closer scrutiny. While few in number, these "top cops" illustrate the emergence of women as more than token leaders of American sheriff and police departments. They are unique groundbreakers who have managed to breach the brass ceiling.

What's it like to be a female cop? Stripped of the television stereotypes and politically correct whitewashing, this is the on-the-record in their own names accounting from three generations of female officers. Black, white, lesbian, straight, feminist, married, single. The only thing they have in common is the badge and gun.About the AuthorAdam Eisenberg: Adam Eisenberg is the Commissioner of Seattle Municipal Court in Seattle, Washington, where he presides over criminal and traffic court matters. Before taking the bench, he was a criminal prosecutor, a civil trial attorney, an advocate on mental health and domestic violence issues, and a Los Angeles-based entertainment journalist.

History in Blue: 160 Years of Women Police, Sheriffs, Detectives, and State Troopers